Saturday, April 5, 2014

DINNER: The Ultimate Roast Chicken

Roast chicken is a dinner classic. How could I continue experimenting with other recipes until I
mastered this very basic, and very elegant main dish? I couldn't. I set my sights on perfecting my roast chicken; I pored over all kinds of recipes, including Thomas Keller's. I learned that the key to making an amazing roast chicken was keeping the bird dry - apparently a moist bird creates steam in the oven, which results in a dry chicken.

Here's what I came up with...hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

Serving Size: 3-4

Ingredients:

One whole chicken - skin on, guts removed

Sea salt

Pepper

Crushed garlic (bottled is fine)

Vinegar

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 420 degrees

Defrost your chicken naturally (i.e. don't use the microwave)

Soak the chicken in vinegar (I use full strength white vinegar, and simply soak the chicken in a bowl of it - turn the chicken in the vinegar bath until all sides have soaked for at least 5 minutes) - this gets rid of the foul chicken smell, which is incredibly strong when you reheat chicken

Remove the chicken from the vinegar bath - dry the chicken inside and out with a paper towel

Generously coat the chicken in sea salt - a tablespoon should do the job

Sprinkle black pepper all over the chicken

Put the chicken on a rack (or slotted plate) over a tray. I didn't have a rack so I used chopsticks to prop my chicken above a pie plate (and placed chopped potatoes underneath the bird - these cooked in the released chicken juices)

Bake for 50-60 minutes - try to avoid opening the oven until at least 45 minutes into the baking process